The Arctic Home in the Vedas c16.12

c16.12

From a consideration of the facts stated above it will be seen that so far as the Code of Manu and the Mahâbhârata are concerned, they preserve for us a reminiscence of a cycle of 10,000 years comprising the four yugas, the Krita, the Tretâ, the Dvâpara and the Kali; and that the Kali yuga of one thousand years had then already set in. In other words, Manu and Vyâsa obviously speak only of a period of 10,000, or, including the Sandhyâs, of 12,000 ordinary or human (not divine) years, from the beginning of the Krita to the end of the Kali yuga; and it is remarkable that in the Atharva Veda we should find a period of 10,000 years apparently assigned to one yuga. It is not, therefore, unlikely that the Atharva Veda takes the Krita, the Tretâ, the Dvâpara and the Kali together, and uses the word yuga to denote the combined duration of all these in the passage referred to above.